Miscellaneous Knowledge

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Todays graphics cards (from ATI or nVidia) often have confusing model numbers, is a 3600 better than a 2800? It’s a tough choice. So here’s a quick guide.

Graphics card model numbers commonly consist of 4 digits then a series of letters afterwards.

The first digit is the generation

The second digit is the performance indicator

The third digit is a refined performance indicator

The forth digit is often just 0

So, a 4800 would be 4th-generation, 800 series. That means it’s better than a 4600.

The performance indicator (digits 2-4) can be translated into

1: Intergrated graphics product, very low performance

2: Low performance

4-3: Low-Mid performance

5-6: Midrange performance

7-8: High performance

9: Ultra High performance

So, whats the difference between a 3800 and 4800? Each generation is generally a bump up the table, so a 3800 is roughly equivalent to a 4600 in terms of performance. This is a very rough indicator however and it does vary hugely. If you have a choice, always get the latest generation card.

The lettering after the number is a further refinement. This can be GT, XT, XTX, GTX and so on.  The letter performance tends not to vary too much on the same card.

Some Graphics Cards are now dual-core, on AMD/ATI cards this is represented by X2. Note the difference between a dual-core graphics card and a dual-running graphics card. A dual-core graphics card has two graphics processors on one chip, while a dual-running graphics card can run in paralell with a similar graphics card. It’s best to get a dual-core card rather than two dual-running cards as the dual-card setups (ATI Crossfire and nVidia SLI) don’t always work too well.

It rocks.

I’ll write more when i’ve got some spare time in which i’m not playing it…

I recently got talking with someone about Paid to Click (PTC) schemes. These have been around since the early days of the internet- the concept being that you are paid to click on links and view websites, simple right? you’ll be earning money like no tomorrow.

Or not. It is possible to make money from PTC, and i’ll go into that later. However, for the most part, you’ll be earning small cash and wasting a lot of time. Mostly, there is a minimum view time requirement and you have to enter spambot-style picture codes to prove that you’re not a robot. At best, you’ll be earning $10 a month for a couple of hours work, even burger flippers earn more!

There are 2 ways to make money in PTC, the secret being to get someone else to do the work for you, i’m talking about referrals. Almost every PTC scheme has a referral program, you get a percentage of your referral’s earnings, and some even go down several levels. So, you can potentially earn money for doing nothing, get a few referrals and let them click away, and encourage them in turn to refer users. Now, this isn’t simple, but there are systems out there to help you. Forums such as Get Paid Forum have threads where you join using the referrer’s address above you, then post your own and people sign up under you and so on, this is a great way to start building your referral tree. From then on, it’s your own responsibility to get people to sign up under you, think of a few innovative ways to get people to do things for you.

Personally, I gave up on PTC, building a referral tree isn’t easy and while I was getting paid, it was peanuts, especially when those referrals under me also gave up and the money stopped coming in. Sure, I could have got more, but it was more work than I was prepared to do. I might retry it though, talking to this person has made me think about trying PTC again and test a few ideas i’ve got floating around to get lots of referrals.

There is however one “get paid for doing nothing on the internet” scheme that’s done well for me, and also has a minimum of effort. It’s the Gomez Peer, the concept is that you get paid for running a program on your computer. If the alarm bells are ringing at this point, turn them off. It’s not spyware, adware nor does it impact your system performance. The company that makes Gomez Peer, Gomez, are a large website testing service. They test the websites of big companies such as Microsoft, Google etc to see how they perform from many different internet connection types all over the world. While Gomez could buy computers and situate them around the world, it makes much more sense for them to get real people to do this and give them a little bit of money, Gomez saves money and people earn some, not bad I say.

So, if you want to try it out, click here to sign up. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be asked to download the program, it’s 20mb. Once installed, it will start testing websites. You will not earn money until Gomez “approves” your account. This takes around 1-2 weeks, they use this period to see how committed you are going to be, they see how long your PC is on and when and if it matches their ideals, you’ll be accepted and start getting paid. I get paid around $10 per month just for running the program, plus in June they are going to start paying people 60% more – excellent. You can install the program on multiple programs to help increase your earnings.

So, if you want to make money for nothing, I strongly recommend the Gomez Peer. It might take time for them to approve your account, but they’ve always paid me on time and the right amount, plus i’ve done no work to earn it! Not bad at all I say. Also, they have quite a few methods of paying you, including PayPal.

And if you want proof, have a look below. This is screenshot form the account section of Gomez. As you can see, so far i’ve got $56.41 out of them, for doing nothing. I’d also post the PayPal payment as proof, but I can’t find it, next time I get paid I will update this post with the proof.

Gomez Peer Lifetime Earnings

(Oh, all the links in this post are referral links in case you didn’t notice. If you sign up for Gomez Peer and get accepted, I get $1. If you don’t want to give me this (doesn’t cost you anything remember) then simply remove the referrer bit from the URL)

Aaah, first post. Good feeling no?

So you’re probably wondering what the hell a blog about Miscellaneous Knowledge is, or perhaps you thought you’d read the first post on here. Quite simply, this is just a collection of interesting facts, methods and odd problems, with a bit of ‘other’ stuff thrown in. The other stuff could be interesting things I find around the web, a little bit of personal life or, well, anything! Hopefully Google will index this and next time you have a really obsure problem, a post will crop up and you will forever bask in my glory (ok, so i’m making the last bit up, but a thanks would be nice).

If you have your own little information tiptbit you’d like to contribute, let me know. It’s always good to have more knowledge.

And now for something completely different – me. I’m a person (last time I checked) and a technology enthusiast (I spend my time around computers). I play a lot of games, mainly source-based ones and 3rd party mods infact, I also have my own game server business which is doing quite well. I also manage a (private) wiki and several game community websites – and thats just the tip of the iceberg.

Enjoy!